Which Firms Will Drive the Next Wave of Crypto Adoption?

One of the interesting characteristics of the cryptocurrency markets is that trading in these assets has predominantly been driven by retail players, with proprietary trading firms being the first institutional size firms to start getting involved.

So which firms are likely to enter the market next, and will they propel the mainstream adoption of crypto trading?

“Naturally a lot of prop desks are looking at the space in a discrete but very active way,” says Francisco PortillejoHoyos, CEO of CRYPTALGO. “The other wave is that a lot of family offices are seeing a very nice diversification on their allocations.”

Speaking at Profit & Loss Forex Network Chicago, Hoyos observed that there were a lot of crypto-focused hedge funds at the event and stated that these funds could be a natural complement to what is currently termed as global macro in the alternative investment space.

“Global macros are looking at accessing the crypto space, maybe as a small percent initially, maybe combining with hedge funds that already have 100% of their activity in the crypto space,” he says.

Hoyos continues: “One thing that’s clear to me is that there will be an entry of customers, retail customers, sophisticated customers, who will go to their banks and will look for [crypto] products, maybe structured products, the ETF has been one example, we’ve seen CFDs, we’re looking at futures, options are in the pipeline already.”

According to Hoyos then, the expansion of potential investment products in the crypto space will naturally attract more sophisticated investors.